'New posts' vs. 'Unread posts'

[Doug Nelson]

I know this is probably the way this function is supposed to work, but 'View new posts' shows me the forum names that have new posts, then I open one and get busy answering it, and if it takes too long when I go back there are no new posts anymore.

I've changed the timeout from 15 minutes to 20 minutes, and I guess I could go further, but it seems it would be a lot friendlier if it was just 'View unread posts' and showed all forums that have posts that haven't been actually opened or marked as read. This way even if I leave the site completely and stay away for a day or more they're still marked as unread when I come back, even though I've clicked on 'View unread posts' already.

Is there anyway to have it behave this way?

I asked once about disabling the timeout completely or putting in some rediculously high number, but it was pointed out if I did that no one would ever 'leave' the board. I simply want it to remember from visit to visit which posts haven't actually been read or marked as read.

[tubedogg]

This could be done...if we had an Oracle backend or something similar. It's just not feasible with MySQL because of the amount of data that would need to be stored to have a record for every member for every thread.

http://vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9054&highlight=marked

[mjames]

I don't believe this is available right now - and it would be a major change in how vB works because you'd be switching from session-based logins to something else. I have wished for that type of system at times, before, as well.

[Doug Nelson]

I can appreciate that it's technically not feasible the way things are coded now. Perhaps if some of the info was offloaded to the user, like my usenet reader? It behaves exactly as I mentioned, with the client being solely responsible for tracking.

[tubedogg]

That would require a client-side program. Which means one for Mac, Windows, Unix, etc. etc. etc. I don't see that happening, at least not as an official project here.

[Doug Nelson]

Yes, that same thing occured to me after I posted that. The info could be stored in the db (require one new text field for each user) but it would be very server-intensive.

Is there a way to search just for all threads with posts today? I've tried using * and it won't accept it (fewer than 4 characters). Plus the shortest period it will search is yesterday and newer.

[tubedogg]

search.php?action=getdaily will get threads with new posts in the last 24 hours.

[Doug Nelson]

That's very handy (and poorly publicized )

Thank you very much!

[tubedogg]

np

[Steve Machol]

Originally posted by Doug Nelson
That's very handy (and poorly publicized )

I like this so much I put it in my forumhome page.